Interventional cardiologists incorporate a variety of diagnostic tools during catheterization procedures in order to plan, guide, and assess therapies. Fluoroscopy is generally used to perform angiographic imaging of blood vessels. In turn, such blood vessel imaging is used by physicians to diagnose, locate and treat blood vessel disease during interventions such as bypass surgery or stent placement. Intravascular imaging technologies such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) are also valuable tools that can be used in lieu of or in combination with fluoroscopy to obtain high-resolution data regarding the condition of the blood vessels for a given subject.
Intravascular optical coherence tomography is a catheter-based imaging modality that uses light to peer into coronary artery walls and generate images thereof for study. Utilizing coherent light, interferometry, and micro-optics, OCT can provide video-rate in-vivo tomography within a diseased vessel with micrometer level resolution. Viewing subsurface structures with high resolution using fiber-optic probes makes OCT especially useful for minimally invasive imaging of internal tissues and organs. The level of detail made possible with OCT allows a user to diagnose as well as monitor the progression of coronary artery disease.
Calcium plaques in blood vessels are a major cause of heart disease. Calcium deposition results in a narrowing of blood vessel diameter and also stiffens the blood vessel wall, which significantly reduces blood vessel performance. Calcium plaques therefore are one of the major targets of cardiovascular intervention but remain difficult to detect in OCT images.
The present disclosure addresses the need for enhanced detection methods for automatically identifying calcified regions within endovascular tissue.